
Hook 



UNCOLAiAiUI ^-Ofj *6 



AN ORATION 



COMMEMORATIVE OF 



PRESIDENT 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN: 



DELIVERED AT 



BROOKLYN, N. Y., 



JXTISTE 1, 1865, 



By RICHARD S. STORRS, Jr., D. D., 



AT THE REQUEST OF 



THE WAR FUND COMMITTEE. 



PUBLISHED BY THE COMMITTEE. 



BROOKLYN: 

THE 1'XIOS" STEAM I> R E S s K S , NO. 10 FRONT STREET. 

1865. 



Um V 



'_ 



5 



ORATION 



Ladies, and Gentlemen : 

In February, 1801, — amid the chills and sleet of the 
unfinished winter, and while the gloom of a prescient 
fear, more oppressive than of any physical season, over- 
shadowed the hearts of the thoughtful and troubled 
American people, — a number of persons, with one 
quaint, homely figure in the midst of them, took their 
departure from Springfield, Illinois, to proceed by grad- 
ual stages to Washington. Neighbors and friends were 
hurriedly assembled to witness the departure; and a 
few simple and touching words of greeting and farewell 
were addressed to them by him who was central in the 
group, and whose kindly face and earnest voice had 
there, for twenty-four years, been familiar. 

Other assemblages, hastily convened, of personal ac- 
quaintances and political friends— with here and there 
some generous or curious political opponents — were 
afterward encountered, as the company proceeded 



from city to city, along the railways which then as now 
overlay and defined their winding route. At Buffalo, 
Albany, New York, Philadelphia, and at other points, 
men came together to see and hear, some to welcome, 
and some as well to criticise or to warn, the man to 
whom, by the voice of a plurality of his fellow-country- 
men, the conduct of the government for four years to 
come had been committed. There was much curiosity 
to be satisfied concerning him. There was a natural 
eagerness to hear what he might say, that involved any 
pithy or pregnant suggestion as to what his course was 
likely to be. But those who remembered the great 
convocations which in other years had greeted the 
chieftains in statesmanship as they made their progress 
through the country, could not but contrast, with the 
numbers and enthusiasm of such previous assemblages, 
the meagreness and the dullness of those now convened. 
And whcai at last the tall, uncouth, but dominant fig- 
ure whichhad been central in these assemblages, disap- 
peared from sight at the capital of Pennsylvania, to 
reappear suddenly in a hotel at Washington — there was 
with a lew a feeling of relief that suspense was oxer, 
and he was sal'elv housed at the Capital; there was 
with many a feeling of shame that any such precau- 
tionary privacy should have been deemed to he need- 
ful, and that the small degree of state till then main- 
tained should have been so wholly and abruptly 
relinquished before he had reached his final goal 



Four crowded and fateful years have passed,— during 
which the nation for the first time in its history lias 
breasted the shock and tasted the bitterness of a fierce 
civil war; during which a half-million of men have fallen, 
dead or maimed, in skirmish and in battle ; during 
which a hundred and fifty thousand households have 
been shrouded in the gloom that rises only from the 
grave of the beloved ; during which arbitrary measures 
and policies, unknown to our previous history, have been 
authorized and enforced ; and during which seasons of 
clamorous expectation, and unjustified hope, have been 
followed by others of utter despondency, and the pas- 
sionate reproaches of which this is the parent, — four 
years have passed, and another company starts from 
Washington, to bear back to the quiet and distant 
Springfield all that remains of that form now prostrate, 
that face and eye now sealed and sightless. 

Amid the shining April days, while springing grass 
and greening boughs proclaim that summer draweth 
nigh, they leave the Capital— which never before has 
been so shaken with pain, and grief, and righteous rage— 
they take the same route which he had traversed when 
coming in Life to his high place, and bear him forever 
from the scene of his eventful sway. And as they go, 
the great capitals of the land welcome with such dem- 
onstrations of honor as no preceding experience lias 
witnessed, the shrunken, discolored, and pulseless frame. 
The city through which he passed before in a sheltering 



privacy, now crowds tumultuous, in tearful affection, 
around his I tier. The great metropolis, — whose mob 
then hated him, the leaders of whose fashion turned from 
him with contempt, and whose authorities sought to 
insult him — now pours from every street and lane the 
intent and sad procession of his mourners. Its whole 
business is suspended ; its houses are hung, from base 
to roof, with funeral weeds; its pavements are thronged 
with silent, patient, unmoving crowds ; its windows 
gleam with pallid faces ; as through the hushed ex- 
pectant avenues winds, hour b) r hour, while bells are 
tolling, and minute-guns with measured boom are 
counting the instants, that vast, unreckoned, unparal- 
leled procession. 

Not capitals only, but States themselves, become 
his mourners. Churches put off their Easter emblems, 
to hide pillar, and wall, and arch, in sable woe. Each 
railway is made a via Dolorosa. The spontaneous 
homage of millions is offered, through the uncovered head, 
the crape, the wreath, through all the sombre insignia of 
grief, as the train with its precious burden speeds. 
The country shrouds its weeping face; and all the 
blooms of Spring around can bring no flush to its 
changed countenance; the song and sparkle, and the 
SWeel impulse ol* which the very air is full, can stir no 
pulse of gladness or of hope, while still that spectacle 
haunts its gaze. For over every loyal heart there broods 
a sorrow as if the mosl revered had fallen; as if the 



shock of personal bereavement had smitten separately 
every household. 

It is to give the reason of this change that we are 
gathered here to-day. It is to tell why this amazing 
contrast appears; which would be yet incredible to us, 
if our eyes had not seen it, if freshest memories did 
not to-day remind us of it. 

Nay, not of this only must we give explanation. 
When Abraham Lincoln left his home for that still re- 
cent journey to Washington, his name was only known 
to his countrymen through its association with late and 
local political discussions. It was utterly unknown, 
except as it appeared on the ballots of those who had 
chosen him President, to the other civilized peoples of 
the world. And when their eyes were unexpectedly 
turned to him, they saw in him only a village attorney, 
who had hardly before been responsibly associated with 
great aifairs, whom his friends believed to be honest 
and sagacious, but whom his opponents described as a 
rough rail-splitter, of humble origin, of no early advan- 
tages, without experience, without signal capacity, and 
more remarkable than for anything else for his fondness 
for coarse and pungent jokes. It was therefore with 
a natural and utter indifference that the multitudes 
heard his unmusical name. It was with a smug 
self-satisfaction that the aristocratic leaders of opinion, 
in England and on the Continent, pointed to the elec- 
tion of such a man, to administer the government at a 



critical time, as the final condemnation of Democratic 
institutions. And it was with a quick and rational 
anxiety that even educated liberals in Great Britain and 
France rehearsed what they heard that was favorable 
to him, and awaited the first indications of his policy. 
This was only four years ago. And now, from the 
entire civilized world arises the chorus of respect for 
his powers, of admiration for his character, of horror 
and grief at his untimely end. No other American 
name since Washington's has become so familiar, or lias 
won such esteem, among the progressive peoples of 
Europe. It is henceforth a name to charm with, in 
Italy and in England, on the boulevards of Paris, in 
the studies of Germany, and among the precipitous 
passes of the Alps. The presses and the men that 
once made shift) apologies for him, have honored him 
for years as one of the leading statesmen of the world. 
Even the papers which month after month insulted 
him without stint, now eagerly applaud his prudence, 
his fortitude, his commanding ability. The English 
Pit/rich, whose ridicule was so bitter that it seemed to 
have in it a personal malice, confesses its error, and 
atones for its jeers in lofty and pathetic lines. And 
with the voices of eulogy and homage rising from his 
still sorrowing countrymen, — rising not only from the 
millions he has ruled, and the other millions whom he 
has emancipated, but even from the impoverished 
States over whose acres his armies swept, and whose 



most practised and crafty commanders Lis patient 
wisdom utterly defeated, — with these rise also, in 
kindred homage, the voices of all the intelligent lead- 
ers of opinions and affairs throughout Christendom. Par- 
liaments, as well as peoples, bring their tribute to his 
memory. The halls of National Assemblies arc 
draped, in sad commemoration of his worth and of 
his death. And debates are suspended, and diplomacy 
waits, while Emperors and Queens clasp hands with 
us before his bier. 

It is one of the strangest contrasts in history ; and it 
is of this contrast, as well as of the other, that we to- 
day are to give explanation. The phenomenon is 
astonishing. It demands at our hands an adequate so- 
lution. But that solution it is not difficult to find. 

A singularly critical and eminent position, singularly 
improved; immense, and almost unparalleled responsi- 
bilities, modestly assumed, and with rare capacity, and 
a rarer patience and magnanimity fulfilled : — here is tic- 
key to this strangest sequence. The only en logy that 
need be pronounced on him is that which sets just this 
before us. 

Observe first his Position. 

Nations are more and more plainly every year the 
grand, organized, almost personal Powers, to whom is 
committed the Future of the World. With thesteady 
advances of civilization, individuals are comparatively 
less influential over the opinion and action of mankind, 



10 

except as they affect the Nation they are part of. But 
the Nation itself becomes every year a mightier pres- 
ence, a more distinct, efficient actor, amid the system of 
allied peoples. And to those which fill with their in- 
stitutions, and outline with their boundaries, the maj) 
of Christendom, is the moulding of the destinies of 
Mankind entrusted. 

Their origin is explained, and shown to be not acci- 
dental, but providential, as we look at them from this 
point. Slowly emerging, like the heads of continents, 
from the waste chaos of the earlier centuries, each one 
has been unfolded, all have been arranged, on an orderly 
plan ; a plan that contemplates results so vast that we 
even yet can scarcely predict them. It is not topo- 
graphy, climate, soil, it is not altogether the kinship 
of blood, it is God, in His eternal wisdom, who has set 
these Nations in their places, and with Divine pres- 
cience and patience of skill has nursed and nurtured 
their tiny germs, lias succored their growth, and has 
built them to their majestic strength, that through 
their final combined might, His plans may lie realized. 

The same thought interprets the permanence of these 
Nations ; the constantly increasing unity of each with- 
in itself, the sharper lines that discriminate each from 
every other. The tendency of our times, with all the 
advance of individual Liberty which has prominently 
marked them, is not toward the disintegration of em- 
pires, but toward their more thorough organization, 



11 

tlieir more profound internal oneness. And while 
forms of government, throughout Europe for example, 
have been subject to sudden and violent mutations 
during the two-thirds now elapsed of the present cen- 
tury, it is a fact full of significance that none of its 
great national organisms has been destroyed; that 
none of them has been seriously changed in its boun- 
daries, or impaired in its strength. The most import- 
ant changes among them have been the increased 
strength of Prussia, and the emeronno; into substantive 
existence of the kingdom of Italy. The progress of 
free thought within their boundaries has not dissolved, 
but has only developed them. The progress of inven- 
tion, overleaping those boundaries, and making neigh- 
bors of distant peoples, has not obliterated or even ob- 
scured the historic lines that stand between them. The 
centripetal force within each has the mastery ; and in 
its more intimate self-centred coherence each stands 
more clearly apart from the rest. The public life in- 
corporated in it, — from whatsoever ancestry derived, by 
whatsoever influences trained, through whatsoever ex- 
perience developed, and in whatsoever legislations, let- 
ters, or arts revealed, — maintains its identity, and 
only perfects its force, and is prepared always for a 
larger impression upon the progress and culture of the 
world. 

Yet while this development within each is going on, 
the equilibrium of all is only thereby more firmly es- 



12 

tablished, and the relations between them becomevital 
;iinl constant* Diplomatic alliances only tardily and 
partly represent the progress of their moral sympathies. 
Because it is separate, each acts on the others with 
which it is allied, with more freedom, directness, 
and positive force. Its acts, and reacts. It gives, 
and it gathers. It makes its own peculiar contri- 
butions, of art, thought, commercial exchange, 
moral powei : and it receives those which are brought 
to it in return. And through this continual recipro- 
city, more vital than treaties, more effective than inter- 
national congresses, each assists the progress of every 
other, and all work together, whether consciously or 
Dot, low ard general results. 

Into the ultimate power of Christendom goes 
therefore a force derived in part from every people. 
The influence of each is made cosmopolitan. Audit be- 
comes more evident constantly that not by individuals,' 
but \>\ these Nations, so separate yet associated, al- 
ways mole unlike, l»ut always also more intimately al- 
lied, is gradually to 1 e reared the world-wide struct are 
of a Universal Civilization ; t hat as the great Persons of 
the continents and the ages, they are to elaborate the 
welfare of Mankind, and accomplish His plans who is 
i be i uler and i he architect of all. 

["here is nothing that more clearly sets God 
before us in the scope of Mi- designs, that more 
vividh unfolds the significance of History, that 



more sublimely impresses on our thoughts the grandeui 
of the times in which we live, thau this view of Na- 
tions, as the ever-renewed and co-operative workers, 
whose power and patience are to build up the Future. 
The earth is illustrious, through their presence upon it. 
The Future is secure, through the mighty concurrence 
with which they march toward it. And the brain that 
swings yonder suns into systems is not so unsearchable 
as that which orders this mighty plan. 

And now among these vast, historic, almost personal 
Powers, it is not presumptuous or idle to feel that this of 
which we ourselves are part, is to have a special and an 
eminent place. We feel it instinctively. An audible un- 
dertone in European society shows the world aware of it. 

Placed on a continent where it stands by itself, and 
from which its influence passes continually, across both 
oceans, to affect all peoples whom commerce reaches, all 
tribes indeed whose languages are known ; founded at 
the beginning, as Chatham said, ' upon ideas of Liberty,' 
and prepared by the very blood that went into it, as 
well as by its subsequent training, to illustrate the 
capacity of Christianized men to organize and maintain 
a democratic autonomy ; with a vast force of thought, 
will, feeling, faith, of all that makes the intensest moral 
life of a Nation, inherited by it, and continually nourish- 
ed by schools, presses, churches, homes, by all the 
labors it has had to perform, and all the hopes that have 
strengthened its heart, — it cannot be but that this Nation 



14 

shall affect with still increasing power the other civilized 
peoples of the Earth. In a degree it does this already ; 
and when its energies shall cease to be concentrated, as 
they hitherto have been, on the preparation of the 
country itself for its habitation, and the swift and 
mighty mastery of its riches, and on the fashioning and 
the upbuilding of its own institutions, — when the edu- 
cational influences that mould it shall have come to 
their fruition, and the spirit of the Nation shall be 
finally formed and declared, — it must pour abroad, 
through constant channels, an infinite influence. 

Either with distrust, then, anxiety, fear, or with 
confidence, affection, expectation, the thoughtful minds 
throughout the world must look upon the people here 
established: whose existence is so recent, its develop- 
ment so rapid, its history so remarkable, and whose 
future hitherto has seemed so uncertain. It is not one 
fact, « >r an< >ther, 1 >y itself, that secures this interest of the 
civilized world in our Republic. The whole drift of civ- 
ilizat ion makes it inevitable. For wod or for evil there 
is here a power that must a.ffect the entire system of as- 
sociated Nations, to make or mar the Future they are 
building. And yonder ocean may as easily be with- 
drawn from fchesight of our eyes, the continent itself maj 
,-i- easily be obliterated from t lie map of t lie world, as the 
Bense of the connection of the development of this peo- 
ple with the destinies of the Race be st rick en from our 
minds, or from the general judgmenl of Christendom. 



15 

When then a terrific crisis suddenly appeared in 
our public experience — when a wide-sweeping and 
passionate rebellion threatened to become a complete 
revolution, to split the Nation into fragments, and to 
change the course of its development forever — it was 
not wonderful, it was only inevitable, that more than 
by any other event of modern times the thoughts of 
Mankind should be occupied with it ; that here not 
only but all abroad it should be felt that the palpable 
leaves of destiny were turning; that forces were 
evolved than which none others more portentous had 
broken upon the world since the modern Nations of 
Europe were born. It was inevitable that with di- 
verse hopes and opposite predictions not Americans 
only but the peoples of Christendom should look to 
see what the issue was to be. 

No man on this continent, therefore, since Washing- 
ton's day, has had such room as was o;iven to him 
whose death we mourn to manifest all of power and 
character which he possessed; to manifest this to the 
eyes of the Nation, to the eyes of Mankind. No other 
man has had the chance to so utterly wreck himself, 
and bury his name in an absolute ignominy, amid the 
sinking fortunes of his country. And, on the other 
hand, to no other man has been given the opportunity 
to make for himself a place forever in the inmost heart 
of the Nation which lie saved; to make for himself a 



16 

world-wide fame ; to touch the centuries still to come, 
and gild their skies with higher splendor. And it is 
because he proved himself equal to the critical, provi- 
dential, unparalleled position, — because he so borehbu- 
self in his grand office that all men saw him a man to 
be loved, a statesman to be trusted, a patriot to be fol- 
lowed through darkest perils without dismay, — there- 
fore it is that eulogies now make the continents vocal; 
that those eulogies take the poetic form which only 
intensity of feeling produces ; and that one of the 
grandest names of the World is to be henceforth, while 
history continues, the plain, untitled, and recent name 
of Abraham Lincoln. 

So much for his Position. Observe now the personal 
Character and Power which he brought to his office and 
the Work which he wrought in it. — Of course the full 
exhibition of these would take volumes, not paragraphs, 
and be the occupation of months of leisure instead of 
a few hurrying hours. Yet we may notice the leading 
traits, and recognize briefly the more prominent pow- 
ers of mind and will, by which he became so apt for 
his work ; and may glance, at least, at the principal 
features of the great work itself. 

It is an impulse of the heart with every one who 
speaks of him to delineate first his moral properties; 
and though these may be dwelt upon so exclusively 
as to seem to involve an injurious forgetfulness of the 

greal intellectual abilities he possessed, yet the course 



17 



of discussion thus suggested is the one which every 
one still must take if lie would not violently constrain 
and divert his own mental processes; if he would not 
it pulse the public heart. The moral, which should be 
supreme in every man, was so, to a degree almost un- 
exampled, in President Lincoln. It made the prime 
impression of the man on those who approached him. It 
shines most prominently before us to-day, throughout 
that crowded and turbulent history along whose dizzy 
paths he has led us. It will be spoken of first and 
most fondly wherever future American parents repeat 
his sayings, rehearse his traits, and tell to their chil- 
dren the story of his career. Of this then, first, we 
may, and we must, with propriety speak. 

And yet it is impossible to speak of it as we would, 
because it is impossible to comprise in words that sub- 
file, essential spirit of Character, which was paramount 
in him; and because— when we analyze, as we say, 
such a Character, and distribute its single though com- 
plex beauty, into the traits which made it up— it is like 
fracturing the diamond to exhibit it; it is like un- 
1 .raiding the strand of light, to show the sunbeam's 
inmost splendor. So far, however, as any formula can 
express what must, by virtue of its spiritual nature, 
elude the grasp and surpass the compass of verbal 
propositions, it may be said that a deep, unselfish Sym- 
pathy with Men, a profound Conviction of the validity 
and authority of certain great principles of Equity 



18 

and Liberty, and an abiding personal Faith in the over- 
ruling- Providence of God, were the principal and per- 
manent constituent forces in the Character which he 
showed. 

The genesis of this, the influences by which it was 
rooted and formed in him, it must be left to the bio- 
grapher to unfold. The Character itself, which these 
elements composed, is as distinct as it is also great ; and 
the memory of it will live forever. 

Wholly individual, utterly genuine, — so independent 
of outward circumstances that obscurity had not at 
all embittered it, and investiture with the vast prero- 
gatives of office only gave it new development, 
through immenser opportunities, — it was the essential 
moral force on which the Nation for four years hung, 
as on a very power of nature ; from which, more than 
from any thing else, it has drawn its present stability 
and hope ; and by reason of which the death of him 
in whom it was revealed has thrilled with new and 
strange emotion the civilized world. 

His Sympathy with Men was shown not only in his 
singularly warm personal attachments, to his family 
and his friends, to all who for any considerable time 
were confidentially associated with him; it was shown 
as well in thai kindness to the poor, the sorrowful, the 
imperilled, with instances of which the journals of 
tli'- country, for four years past, have been running 
over. The wearied, sick, or wounded soldier found 



L9 



always a friend in him as solicitous for his welfare as 
if he had been his kinsman by birth. The Little chil- 
dren in the Home for the Destitute were touched b\ 
the tearful tenderness and dignity, the instructive 
clearness, and the quickening playfulness with which 
he addressed them. The poor treed people— who had 
escaped from the slavery through which his armies 
crushed their way, but had escaped to communities that 
seemed less friendly than those they had left, and had 
passed from a bondage which at least had given them 
shelter and food, to a liberty that threatened to doom 
them to idleness, and to overwhelm them in an absolute 
wa nt— it was not with ostentatious charity, it was with 
no splendid philanthropical theory, it was with a ten- 
der welcoming respect, that he heard their story, ex- 
amined their condition, and opened the way for (-.ape 
from their fears. 

After four years of incessant, bloody, desperate 
struo-o-le he entered Richmond, with characteristic un- 
ostentation,— not at the head of marshalled armies, 
with banners advanced and trumpets sounding, but as 
a private gentleman, on foot, with an officer on one 
side, holding the hand of his boy on flic other. An 
ao-ed ne'-ro met him on the street, and said — with the 
tears streaming down his face, as he bowed low his un- 
covered head— "God bress you, Massa Lincoln V The 
President paused, raised his hat OD the instant, and 
with a hearty "I thank you, Sir; 1 acknowledged with 



20 

a bow the greeting. Instinctively he recognized the 
poorest as his peer, and the black man as his brother. 

On each of two days, in all his brief and burdened 
weeks, he gave some hours to receiving the petitions 
of those who sought from him any personal favor. He 
took upon himself, with glad alacrity, the labor of in- 
vestigating claims for relief which had been always 
under other administrations, which should have been un- 
der his, referred at once to subordinate officers. He 
did it because he could not help it. His nature de- 
manded it ; and that nature could not be expelled witli 
a pitch-fork. No trophies won by legislators or gen- 
erals ever disturbed, for the tenth of a minute, his 
healthful slumbers. But the mere recollection of a 
case of suffering which he had not relieved, of an in- 
stance of anxiety which he had not soothed as quickly 
as he might, would keep him tossing for many hours 
on an unrestful bed. And it was not a burden, but 
always a relief to him, to turn from eminent public af- 
fairs to talk with the poor who sought his aid, and to 
bind up with assiduous skill the wounds of the sor- 
rowful. 

The same spirit was revealed, in a more unique exhi- 
bition, in his sympathetic regard for his opponents. He 
laughed at the jokes which were made about himself; 
was tolerant, fco a degree before unexampled, of attacks 
on liis policy : and never took a particle ofvenom into 
his nature from all the virulent assaults that were 



21 



made on him. While holding tenaciously to his own 
views and plans, he never tailed to do generous justice 
to the reasons and the motives of those who combated 
them ; to recognize in them wherever he could, and 
sometimes where none of his colleagues could, a patri- 
otism as genuine as his own, and a purpose as true to 
secure and promote the general welfare. He talked 
with, reasoned with, wrote to them, in this spirit ; was 
not moved from his position of friendliness toward 
them by their misconceptions or their abuse ; and 
never could belive them traitorous in their hearts till 
the overt act had compelled him to see it. 

Toward even those who had dangerously offended 
against the laws, he hardly could bring himself to adopt 
any course save one of the utmost clemency and gentle- 
ness. He pardoned with so much eagerness that one 
of his own cabinet officers declared that the power of 
pardoning should be taken from him. The military 
discipline of the army itself was more than once in dan- 
ger of decay, through his inability to order the final 
penalties inflicted on those who had incurred them ; 
and spies and traitors within the Capital were shielded, 
more than was easily reconciled with the safety of the 
Government, by his unwillingness to have them sub- 
jected to any harsh measures. 

Of course his sensibilities came gradually to be under 
the control of his judgment, while the counsels of others 
constrained him sometimes to a severity which h<' 



22 

hated ; so that at length the order for the merited 
restraint or punishment of public offenders was fre- 
quently, though always reluctantly, ratified by him. 
But his sympathy with men, in whatever condition, of 
whatever opinions, in whatsoever wrongs involved, was 
so native and constant, and so controlling, that he was 
always not so much inclined as pre-determined to the 
mildest and most generous theory possible. And some- 
thing of peril, as well as of promise, was involved to the 
public in this element of his nature. 

He would not admit that he was in danger of the 
very assassination by which at last his life was taken, 
and only yielded with a protest to the precautions 
which others felt bound to take for him ; because his 
own sympathy with men was so strong that lie could 
not believe that any would meditate serious harm to 
him. The public policy of his administration was con- 
stantly in danger of being too tardy, lenient, pacific, 
toward those who were combined for deadly battle 
against the Government, because lie was so solicitous 
to win, so anxious to bless, and so reluctant sharply to 
strike Sic semper tyrannis, shouted his wild, theatric 
assassin, ;is he leaped upon the stage: — making the 
Miieient motto of Virginia a legend of shame forever- 

re. Bui no magistrate ever lived who had less of 

the tyranl in his natural or his habitual temper. In 
all the veins of all his frame no drop of unsympathetic 
blood found a channel. When retaliation seemed the 



23 



only just policy for the Government to adopt, to save 
its soldiers from being shot in cold blood, or being 
starved into idiocy, it was simply impossible for him to , 
accept it. And if lie had met the arch cons] >irat< >rs face 
to face,— those who had racked and really enlarged the 
English vocabulary to get terms to express their hatred 
and disgust toward him individually, those who were 
striking with desperate blows at the National existence 
—it would have been hard for him not to greet them 
with open hand and a kindly welcome. 

The very element of sadness, which was so in- 
wrought with his mirthfulness and humor, and which 
will look out on coming generations through the pen- 
sive lines upon his face, and the light of his pathetic 
eyes, came into his spirit, or was constantly renewed 
there, through his sympathy with men, especially with 
the oppressed and the poor. He took upon himself 
the sorrows of others. He bent in extremest personal 
suffering under the blows that fell on his countrymen. 
And when the bloody rain of battle was sprinkling 
the trees and the sod of Virginia, during successive 
dreary campaigns, his inmost soul felt the baptism of 
it, and was sickened with grief. 'I cannot bear it '- 
'I cannot bear it,'— he said more than once, as the 
story was told him of the sacrifice required to secure 
some result, No glow, even of triumph, could expel 
from his eyes the fears occasioned by the suffering that 
had bought it. 



24 

And yet through this native sympathy with men lie 

gained a large part of his immense power over his 
.country and his times. From it in part came, no doubt, 
the sublime temperateness of his spirit. He lived in 
times when a man without this must now and then 
have flamed into passion, at the arrogant ferocity that 
taunted and smote him. But no man remembers an 
hour in his life when passion made his accents tremble. 
He hated slavery with a life-long abhorrence, and 
wrestled with it for four fierce years in deadly grapple ; 
and many men, not hating it more, not feeling it so 
much, had come not unnaturally to transfer to persons 
their wrath against the system, and had been embit- 
tered through their just indignation. He kept the 
utter sweetness of his spirit, as if he had been a child 
by the lire-side. His blood was not heated in the des- 
perate struggle; and even conscience offended could 
not make him acrimonious. 

He gained another power through this sympathy 
with men. Not only by it did he come to be endeared, 
so as no President preceding him had been, to the 
universal heart of tin Nation, to its women and chil- 
dren, as well as its men ; not only did its rare vital 
force surp;is> our boundaries, and make the humble 
abroad his friends; -lie came, by virtue of it ill 
great measure, to be the Representative Man of the peo- 
ple. It brought him into spontaneous correspondence 
with the average thought and feeling of the country. 



25 

He did not depend on witnesses and counsellors. He 
'knew in himself what the "plain people" wanted, 
whom he honored and believed in, to whose ranks he 
expected soon to return, and who, as he said, were will- 
ing and aide to save the government, if the government 
would do its part indifferently well. 

Through a process imperceptible to himself, no doubt, 
in its methods and modes, but natural to his sympa- 
thetic constitution, he came to dwell in such accord with 
the public — not with any one party, or any one se1 of 
leaders and thinkers, but with the collective spirit of 
the Nation — that when lie spoke it felt its thought 
articulated through him; and his ultimate decision, on 
almost any question, announced and sealed the public 
judgment. 

The independence of his policy had its origin here. 
He was always ready to hear and consider an\ opinion. 
The most conservative, the most violently radical, were 
equally at home with him. Yet the eloquent or in- 
genious advocates of a theory often found, to their sur- 
prise, that they had less influence over his counsels t han 
over those of men whom they thought his superiors. 
The truth is, the entire public was his teacher. His 
nature drew, through secret ducts, the wisdom of the 
Nation into itself; and the roots of his matured opinions 
were as wide as the country. 

His policy was plastic, too, and legitimately pro- 
gressive, as well as independent ; because it represented, 



26 

in successive stages, the popular mind. And where any 
man with a fixed and inflexible personal theory, which 
he must carry out, would inevitably have found it too 
narrow and rigid to encompass the crisis, and would 
have seen it hopelessly shattered in the progress of 
events, his policy was modified and expanded with time, 
because he kept abreast with the people he ruled. He 
carried their purpose and thought in himself. He grew 
with their growth, and shared in their advancing wis- 
dom ; and so, to the end, his plans were elastic, and the 
Nation gave, to realize those plans — which did but in- 
corporate its wisest opinions — its whole tremendous 
and unreserved power. 

But with this element of Sympathy with Men we 
must combine, in inseparable union, the others I have 
named, to get an adequate impression of his Character: 
He had a profound and enduring Conviction of the 
value and authority of certain great principles of 
Equity and of Liberty; while nothing was more vital 
or positive in him than his Faith in the rule and the 
providence of God. — From these elements his Charac- 
ter took firmness, greatness, an individual force and 
majesty. He was kept from becoming a mere sensi- 
tive exponent of the popular feeling, and became in- 
stead a noble Chief Magistrate, instructed by all, ye1 
more instructing t hem in return. 

They who thought him only a shrewd politician 
were singularly mistaken. He was that, no doubt; 



27 

but history will certainly rank him also anion-- our 
most philosophical statesmen. The great ethical prin- 
ciples which, though invisible, are primitive, organific, 
in our National development, by which our history has 
been vitally moulded, and through which that history 
becomes important to the world — these had to him es- 
sential reality, and an incomparable value. His love for 
the very system of Government of which he became 
the grand defender, had its origin in its relation to 
these principles; its actual approximate correspon- 
dence with them; its capacity to be shaped to ex | tress 
them more perfectly ; its fitness and power to extend 
them. Without rhythm in his sentences, or any fcaste 
for esthetic art, the ideal in the State moved him more 
than the material, and was always an educating pre- 
sence to his mind. 

Sprung from the soil, a child of the teeming and 
wealthy West, it might have been expected that the 
mere physical greatness of the country would have al- 
lured and toned his thought ; that its vast expanse, 
with its prodigal progress in wealth, population, and all 
resources, would have been to him, as they had been t<» 
many others of our statesmen, both from the Eas1 and 
from the West, the occasion of his grateful and 
proud admiration. But, on the other hand, he seems 
hardly to have thought of them. He took them for 
granted; only casually referred to them; and was 
scarcely sustained or moved in his work by any eon- 



28 

» 

siderations derived from them. The effort of the con- 
spirators in league against the Government to wrench 
apart what God had bolted together with mountains, 
and had laced inextricably into one by the marvellous 
system of Western rivers, — their effort to sever the 
National domain, and to build two empires where 
climate, race, topography, language, combined to de- 
mand that there should be but one, — this does not 
seem to have roused him against it. So far as appears 
he never was stirred by the natural and not unlaudable 
ambition to have the country remain as of old, surpass- 
ing others in its physical extent, and outshining them 
with its more splendid treasures. 

But the Principles involved in the National institu- 
tions were to him inexpressibly sacred and dear ; and 
against the warfare made upon these, on behalf of an 
ambition which instinctively hated them, he set his 
kindly face like a flint. Even the historic recollections 
of the Nation were chiefly important or significant to 
him as connected with these principles ; and the moral 
unity derived from these was that which in his thought 
knit the present to the past, and made our diverse 
peoples one. So he said at the West, in 1858, of the 
Germans, Irishmen, Frenchmen, Scandinavians, who 
have come here since the war of Independence : "If 
they look back through our history to trace their con- 
nection with those days of blood, they find they have 
none; they cannot carry themselves back into that 



29 

glorious epoch, and make themselves feel that they arc 
part of us. But when they look through the Declara- 
tion of Independence, they find that these old men say 
that 'we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all 
men are created equal;' and then they feel that that 
moral sentiment, taught in that day, evidences their 
relation to these men ; that it is the Father of all moral 
principle in them ; and that they have a right to claim 
it, as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh 
of the nesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration. 
And so they have. That is the electric cord that links 
the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together : 
that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love 
of freedom exists in the minds of men." 

So he said afterward, in 1861, substantially at Tren- 
ton, and more fully at Philadelphia : " It was not the 
mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the 
Mother-Land, but it was that sentiment in the Declara- 
tion of Independence, which gave liberty, not alone to 
the people of this country, but I hope to the world, for 
all future time. It was that which promised that in 
due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders 
of all men ;" — adding, with what now looks like 
prescience, "If this country cannot be saved without 
giving up that principle, I was about to say, I would 
rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it." 

From this conviction of the essential authority and 
value, and the enduring cosmical importance, of the 



30 

principles lie maintained, came in part, no doubt, his 
singular freedom from personal assumption, from all 
personal greed for pleasure or gain. He was called, by 
one who knew him well, 'the honestest man he had ever 
known ;' and certainly no man's pecuniary honesty has 
been tested more thoroughly — with uncounted millions 
at his command, and a secret service, responsible to him, 
which swallowed gold as thirsty sands soak up the 
rain. But his honesty was not a separate trait, set 
mechanically into his nature, and governing what was 
alien to it. It was a part, living and inseparable, of his 
conscientious and ingenuous mind. He believed in the 
Right, for himself and for others. Its rules were clear to 
him, its authority perfect ; and it governed him in small 
things as well as in the greatest. 

From this came also his singular patience, and his un- 
wearied courage, in regard to the issue of the terrible 
contest. Sadly as he felt the sacrifice it involved, in- 
clined as he was to distrust himself, and knowing as 
none beside could know with what manifold perils the 
cause was beset, lie seems never to have doubted the 
final result. The mind of the public,fixed chiefly on the 
visible forces engaged, wavered often, sometimes vio- 
lently oscillated, between the utmost confidence of suc- 
cess and the most extreme depression and fear. He 
held with marvellous steadiness on his way; never exas- 
perated, never over-elated, yet always expecting sure vic- 
tory in the end, it' it took a lite-time to attain it ; because 



31 



his hold on the principles involved was utterly infrangi- 
ble, and their ultimate victory he believed to be certain. 
He saw the Divine forces which, all unheard by mor- 
tal ear, were still contending on our side; and he knew 
that till Christianity went down, Slavery could n<>t 
succeed against Liberty. The 'rapture of battle' he 
neverfelt. The 'courage of conscience 1 he always knew ; 
and the key to all his policy is found in one sentence 
of one of his speeches, before he was President: "Let 
us have faith that Right makes Might; and in thai 
faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we un- 
derstand it." 

The same element in his Character, the same unswerv- 
ing confidence in principles, gave a true moral unity to 
his administration. It imparted a certain philosophical 
tone, almost a religious, to much of his statesmanship; 
a tone most emphatic in his latest Address. A latent 
enthusiasm was bred in him by it; an enthusiasm that 
rarely was wrought into utterance, but that kept all 
his powers in most complete exercise, while it some- 
times made his sentences throb with its inward fervor. 
He became, in some sense, to his own consciousness, a 
consecrated man ; consecrated to the championship of 
principles of Government, 'by which,' as he said, 'the 
Republic lives and keeps alive,' and in which the whole 
human race has a stake. Hence came the undertone 
that thrilled through his short address at Grettysburgh, 
which is more henceforth to the American people than 



32 

the stateliest oration preserved in its archives. Hence 
came, in part, the tranquility and the scope of his high- 
leveled policy. It was to himself an inspiration ; while 
it gave him a power over the enlightened reason of the 
people which no other President since Washington has 
had. 

With this came also, in intimate agreement, that sense 
of the presence and providence of God, which seems never 
to have wavered, from the time when he went forth from 
Springfield for Washington, asking the friends whom 
he left to pray for him, till the time when he said, in 
his latest Address, "As was said three thousand years 
ago, so still it must be said, the judgments of the Lord 
are true and righteous altogether. " Without the leasl 
taint of fanaticism, his belief in God's regard for the 
principles which he was defending, was so earnest and 
constant, and at last so devout, that the whole long 
war became to him a sacred war. He recognized the 
guidance of Providence throughout it, in •our reverses 
;is well as our successes, and saw the forecast that had 
shaped it. Reverently, practically, he felt himself but 
an instrument in God's hand; and knew that when the 
Divine consummation had been attained, the mystic and 
awful tragedy would be over. "Let us be quite sober," 
lie said; "let us diligently apply the means, never 
doubting that a just Grod, in His own good time, will 
give us the rightful result." 

Hence came the crown of dignity on the character in 



:;:; 



which sympathy with men, and conscientious fidelity to 
principles, had been before so intimately blended. No 
man can be morally great whose soul does not rest on 
God as its centre, and does not draw from communion 
with Him its inmost life. Especially when the leader 
in great affairs stands face to face with the possible 
speedy wreck of his country, — when he treads a path all 
hidden and perilous, without precedent to govern, or 
parallel to direct him, and sees the contracting horizon 
around shot through with blood, and all a-flame, — the 
only thing to keep him staunch, serene, clear-visioned, 
is trust in the Highest. It was the life within his life 
to him whom we mourn. Not uttering itself in any set 
phrase, not prompting much to religious ceremonial, it 
gave him a steadiness almost invincible. It made him 
expectant of a Future as grand as the way that ltd to 
it was bloody and dark. It united his soul with all 
that was highest in the heart and conscience of the 
People which he ruled. 

It was this alone which enabled him to say, in 
closing his second Inaugural Address, in words that illus- 
trate the whole Character of the man, and that will live 
while the language in which they were uttered endures : 
"With malice toward none, with charity tor all, with 
firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, 
let us strive on, to finish the work we are in: bo bind 
up the Nation's wounds; to care for him whoshal] have 
borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans; 



34 

to do all which we may to achieve and cherish a just 
and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all Nation s. 1 ' 
Combine now, with all these loftier elements, a 
natural mirthful n ess that was constant, exuberant, that 
sparkled into jest and story, and kept his faculties al- 
ways fresh ; — remember that these so various traits were 
melted together into a Character utterly simple, utterly 
personal, in which was nothing copied from antique 
models, and nothing imported from foreign examples, 
which was wholly an American product, born of the 
influences that had moulded his youth, and nourished 
by the woods, the river, and the prairie, as modern as 
the West, and as native as its oaks ; — remember that 
through the whole atmosphere of the times this Charac- 
ter daily radiated influence, in some quaint word or 
comic story, so that all saw the identity of it, and felt 
that, as was said of him once, ' if he were passed through 
all hoppers in the universe, and ground into dust a 
million times, when put together again at the end he 
would come out simply Abraham Lincoln; 1 — and then 
remember that what the country needed and craved, a 
thousand times more than splendid talents, was such 
thorough and permanent goodness in its Head, honesty, 
fidelity, patience, magnanimity, and an unsuspicioned 
integrity of purpose,- and von have in part the explana- 
tion <»f that prodigious hold which he gained on the 
country which he ruled, and on the world which watch- 
ed that country. 



35 



The magnetism that held the Nation steadfastly to 
him had here its vital source and scat. He made mis- 
takes; men did not defend, did not feel it very necessary 
to apologize for them. He was not omniscient, and his 
judgment might sometimes be in error. But his 
character was what the people wanted; too Lenient, 
sometimes, but kindly, tolerant, patient, always ; with- 
out a trace of arrogance or of passion ; as little imperi- 
ous as the air or the sunshine ; as little likely to be 
crazed with ambition as the clouds, from which drop 
the showers of Spring, to distil their kindly dews into 
venom. And a character like this was incomparably 
more to the imperilled and anxious people than the ut- 
most ability without it would have been. 

There is such a thing as moral genius ; — a temper so 
wholly individual and original, so vitally compact 
of various excellencies, and so alive with personal 
force, that it sustains and attracts more than do splen- 
did intellectual powers. And it was this moral genius 
which America wanted, which he supplied. By virtue 
of it, he seemed to fill the land with his example. He 
incarnated not only, but instructed and inspired, the 
temper of the People; till it had more confidence in 
him than it had in itself. Amid arbitrary arrests, and 
damaging defeats, its trust in his temper never yielded. 
1 His very mistakes ' as one has said, ' became omnipo- 
tent.' For, through the whole of his strange term of 
offlce _ a fter the Nation had come to know him it was 

5 



36 



a source to it of central joy that one so faithful, sym- 
pathetic, conscientious, was supreme in the goverment ; 
that a will so earnestly trustful in Providence was 
guiding the forces which Providence had evolved ; that 
hands so pure had been found to bear, across the stony 
wilderness of fear, and through the mounting seas of 
blood, the civil Constitution, which is to the Republic 
its consecrated ark. 

But Character alone, even one so original and so 
eminent as his, could never explain the singular place 
attained by Mr. Lincoln in the respect of the Country 
and the World ; could never wholly account for the 
work which he accomplished. Intellectual power, ex- 
ecutive faculty, a large capacity for skilful and labor- 
ious administration, are also implied in such mastership 
as his; and aside from these, amid such times as ours 
have been, he must have proved a simple drift-log on 
the current, unable to govern it, only rushing with it 
toward the abyss. As we turn, then, to consider h is 
nature in this view, we shall find, I think, that a re- 
markable faculty for exact and discriminating Thought 
was combined in him with immense Common Sense, and 
-nil practical Sagacity ; while his executive force was 
imparted by a Will yielding in small things, but tena- 
cious in great, and capable of long-continued exertion. 

These were the instruments through which his patient 
spirit wroughl to itso-i-eat issues. They made the force, 
i">t splendid, hut practical and effective, which took 






37 

from his Character ' the consecration and the gleam, 1 
and of which that which we have derived from him is 
the permanent fruit. 

The exact and incisive habit of his mind was ((in- 
stantly shown in his papers and speeches, and even in 
his unstudied utterances. His jests were always more 
remarkable than for anything else for their absolute 
fitnesss to the point illustrated. The fun that was in 
them, even when it was coarse, was weighted with 
meaning, and edged with sharp thought. They were, 
what Lord Bacon says proverbs are — 'the edge-tools of 
speech, which cut and penetrate the knots of affairs.' 
His discriminations were always accurate; and no 
soj^histry could stand before the fire of his analysis. 

Where has the essential unwisdom of Secession, even 
supposing it wholly successful, ever been more succinct- 
ly exposed than it was by him in his first Inaugural : 
"Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot 
remove our respective sections from each other, nor 
build an impassable wall between them. * Is it 

possible then to make our intercourse more advanta- 
geous, or more satisfactory, after separation than before I 
Can aliens make treaties, easier than friends can make 
laws 2 Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between 
aliens, than laws can among friends C 

Where has the argument against the Constitutional 
right of Secession been more tersely, yet, more complete- 
ly set forth, than in these words: " Perpetuity is im- 



38 



plied if not expressed in the fundamental law of all 
National Governments. * * Continue to execute all 
the express provisions of our National Constitution, 
and the Union will endure forever ; it being impossible 
to destroy it, except by some action not provided for in 
the instrument itself." And where has ever the ab- 
surdity of the argument for the right of Secession, 
derived from the general doctrine of State Rights, been 
more sharply exhibited than in a sentence or two of 
his first Message : " If all the States save one should as- 
sert their right to drive that one out of the Union, it 
is presumed the whole class of Seceder politicians 
would at once deny the power, and denounce the act as 
the grossest outrage upon State Rights. But suppose 
that precisely the same act, instead of being called 
driving the one out, should be called the seceding of 
the others from it,— it would be exactly what the 
Seceders claim to do ; unless, indeed, they make the 
point," he adds with an irony not less tutting because 
it is gentle, "unless they make the point, that the one, 
because it is a minority, may rightfully do what the 
others, because they are a majority, may not rightfully 

do." 

In his entire treatment of the right of Secession, the 
same sharp and destructive analysis is shown. Tims: 
"A part of the present National debt was contracted to 
pay the old debl of Texas. Is it jusl thai she shall 
Leave, and pay no part of this herself? If ops State 



3<.> 



may secede, so may another ; and when all shall have 
seceded, none is left to pay the debts. Is this quite just 
to creditors?" — how liis lips must have smiled as he 
wrote the question ! "Did we notify them of this sane 
view of ours when we borrowed their money?" Again : 
"The Constitution provides, and all the States have ac- 
cepted the provision, that the United States shall 
guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican 
form of Government. But if a State may lawfully go 
out of the Union, having done so it may also discard 
the Republican form of Government. So that t<> pre- 
vent its going out, is an indispensable means to the end 
of maintaining the guarantee mentioned; and where an 
end is lawful and obligatory, the indispensable means 
to it are also lawful and obligatory." 

As further illustrative of the same property and 
tendency of his mind, remember a sentence or two from 
his letter to those in Kentucky who though loyal to 
the Government objected to the Emancipation Procla- 
mation, and wished it recalled : "It shows a gain of a 
hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and 
laborers [for the Union cause.] Now let any Union 
man who complains of the measure tesl himself, by 
writing down in one line, that 'he is for subduing the 
Rebellion by force of arms; 1 and, in the aext, that "he 
is for taking these hundred and thirty thousand men 
from the Union side, and placing them where the} 
would be but for the measure which he condemns.' If 



40 

lie cannot face his cause so stated, it is because he can- 
not face the truth." 

So, in a letter written much earlier, to those at the 
West who objected to his policy: "You say that } t ou 
will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem to 
be willing: to fight for you, but no matter. Fight you 
then exclusively to save the Union. I issued the pro- 
clamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. 
Whenever you shall have conquered all resistance to 
the Union, if I shall urge you to continue fighting, it 
will be an apt time for you to declare that you will not 
fight to free negroes. I thought that in your struggle 
for the Union to whatever extent the negroes should 
cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened 
that enemy in his resistance to you. Do you think 
differently % I thought that whatever negroes can 1 >e 
got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white 
soldiers to do in saving the Union. Does it appear 
otherwise to you ? But negroes, like other people, act 
upon motives. Why should they do anything for us, 
if we will do nothing for them \ If they stake their 
Lives lor us, they must be prompted by the strongest 
motive, even the promise of Freedom. And the promise, 
being made, must be kept." 

I( is evident that before a mind so careful, so per- 
spicuous, so analytic as this, there was but little chance 
for sophisms to stand ; and that whatever secured the 
asseul of one so accustomed to Logical processes, and to 



41 

clear discriminations, was likely at least to have much 
in its favor, if not to he finally accepted and ratified by 
the public judgment. But the faculty of careful ra- 
tiocination is not synonymous with practical sagacity ; 

and a mind addicted to the logical exercise may be 
even fatally narrowed therein- — losing in general Der- 
ceptive sensibility, in administrative skill, and in 
breadth of reason, while it gains in particular dialecti- 
cal force. In attempting to explain, then, the unri- 
valled personal position attained by Mr. Lincoln, the sin- 
gular power exercised by him, not only over public af- 
fairs, but over the sentiments and convictions of the pe< >- 
pie, and over the general mind of Mankind, it is of cardinal 
consequence to observe, that with this careful precision 
of Thought he combined a really supreme Common 
Sense; a practical Sagacity, so intuitive and enlightening 
that, though it did not keep him from committing mis- 
takes, it kept him from any fatal error, and justified al- 
ways that confidence in his plans which at first it 
inspired. 

His mind possessed scope, as well as sharpness. 
He looked on the right hand, and on the left, before he 
smote. His reason saw before and after ; and in the 
clear comprehension of results, and of the methods by 
which to attain them, his judgment showed itself as dis- 
cursive and prescient, as his power of analysis was 
trenchant and fine. — Here was really the centre of lii- 
strength; the fruitful source of his success as a States- 



42 

man. And when associated, as it was, with the Charac- 
ter we have sketched, and with a tenacious and patient 
Will, it goes very far toward explaining his power, and 
interpreting his work. 

There is a showy but dangerous kind of mind some- 
times employed in the offices of statesmanship, whose 
power lies, and also its peril, in what may be called 
intellectual constructiveness. It deals largely with the 
abstract. It is might}' in making paper governments. 
Its schemes express ideal conceptions; and it counts it 
almost a degradation to stoop to consider practical ne- 
cessities. It theorizes splendidly on what ought to be, 
and insists that the facts shall correspond with the 
theory; or, if either must give way, that the facts shall 
be displaced to make room for the theory. The vast, 
intricate, gradual administration of public affairs, which 
contemplates many interests, and has to deal with 
great masses of men, it would mould relentlessly by 
preconceived metaphysical plans; and it is always un- 
satisfied, until the two distinctly correspond. 

There is much that is striking in this style of mind. 
It is apt to win a large share of admiration, especially 
among the studious and refined. It is an important 
element, no doubt, in public counsels: because, when 
arrayed, as it usually is, in a speculative opposition to 
the actual governing forces in a Nation, its criticisms are 
helpful. They tend to expand the horizon of rulers, 
ami to lift toward the austere levels of reason what 



43 

might otherwise sink to the plane of expediency and 
political tactics. If its shining air-palaces do not be- 
come solid terrestrial successes, they yet hold before 
men the ideal forms of public development; and the 
workers beneath may build better and higher for 
having surveyed them. 

But when such a mind is placed itself at the head of 
affairs, — unless it has that reach of vision, with that 
vividness of perception, which belong only to the high- 
est genius, and unless possessed of a knowledge of facts 
that is well nigh omniscient, — it is sure to be found in- 
competent to its task. Especially in difficult and 
critical times, when great elemental forces are evolved 
beneath and overhead, when the whirlwinds of passion 
are loosed from their chambers, and sudden currents, 
which no chart shows, are hurled to and fro with fierce 
velocity, while the Nation drifts and drives before 
them in unexpected directions, — such a mind as this is 
the poorest of pilots. Its beautiful schemes no more 
match the emergency than ingenious theorems arrest 
the typhoon. It wants tact, invention, insight, hardi- 
hood. Losing sight of the headlands, it fails- to make 
allowance for variations of the compass. It does not 
hear the boom of the surf on the rocks to leeward. 
The awful volume and onset of the storm are too much 
for its theoretic navigation : and the civw must mutiny, 
and put a more practical man at the head, or crew and 
ship will go to the bottom. 



14 

Not such, certainly, was the mind of Mr. Lincoln. 
Men quarelled with him sometimes, because he had not 
more of this wholly intellectual and ethical tendency. 
But if he had had more, the Nation and the World 
might not to-day have been his mourners. 

There is, on the other hand, a cheap and sterile 
species of shrewdness, which often calls itself Common 
Sense, — which sometimes even passes for such, when it is 
installed in positions of influence, — which makes nothing 
of principles, but everything of what it conceives to be 
-'tacts. 1 It has no ideal ; but takes its suggestions from 
the newspapers, from the caucuses, from the last man 
who speaks. Its plans are moulded by no ethical har- 
monies, by no fitness even to serve great ends, but by 
immediate personal influences. It prides itself on being 
exclusively practical ; on aiming to conserve what al- 
ready exists, to hold parties together, to smooth away 
differences, and to reconcile by a dexterous manipu- 
lation antagonist interests. It discredits the higher 
nature of the People, and thinks anything can be 
carried by a skilful and timely handling of Conven- 
tions. If has faith in one thing: — political management. 
It knows one rule: — to do what is popular. It is con- 
stant to one purpose : — to keep things quiet. It some- 
times achieves in peaceful days a transient success, and 
wins, perhaps, from the more unthinking, a superficial 
applause. But its end, even then, is generally failure; 
since it never awakens a generous impulse, and never 



15 

inspires any general confidence. And in times of immi- 
nent public peril, it is not insufficient only, 1 nit essen- 
tially dangerous. Trivial by nature, when the pressure 
comes upon it, it first becomes trickish, and then becomes 
treacherous. Losing head altogether, in the final crisis, 
it is likely to carry everything that depends on it into 
sudden and uttermost wreck. 

Such has been the style of* mind too often exhibited 
among those who have ranked as political lenders, on 
one side or the other, in our country and time. Such 
was, perhaps, the style of mind men feared would appear 
in President Lincoln, before they had had experience 
of him. But such, thank God! was as far as possible 
from being the type or the parallel of the mind, which 
by degrees was brought out in him. 

Not addicted to theorizing, and dogmatic speculation, 
in no sense a doctrinaire, he was not either a man of ex- 
pedients; a simply shrewd, unfruitful manager of politi- 
cal affairs. Clear-sighted by nature, he had kept his 
judgment healthy and strong, by intercourse with men, 
and by a pure and manly life; and so he was ready 
.without being rash, wary and cool, without the slight- 
est timidity. Quick to perceive, lie was slow to de- 
cide, offering liberal hospitality to all discreet counsels, 
and determined to discover what was best on the whole, 
whether it agreed witli any theory or not. And when 
immense exigencies suddenly confronted him, he kept 
his balance; he was not bewildered in the crisis; and 



4ti 

if lie did not show that marvellous genius which illum- 
inates all things with one broad flash, he showed an in- 
tuitive and large Common Sense; a calm, persistent, 
wide-sighted Sagacity; that quality of mind which en- 
ables its possessor to see principles clearly, hut to see 
also the governing practical necessities amid which 
those principles must he unfolded; which makes him 
wise in selecting his methods, and sure, if not swift, in 
accomplishing his ends. He showed, in other words, 
not indeed in an absolute degree, but in a very high and 
remarkable degree, precisely that species of mental 
ability which an intelligent democracy craves in its 
Ruler ; precisely that which was needed for the times ; 
precisely that without which a showy faculty for theo- 
rizing, or a mere trained political shrewdness, would 
infallibly have brought us to speedy destruction. 
Through this he did his unequalled work for the Laud 
and the World. And this will always shine paramount 
in him, while his history is read. 

Observe what illustration it found in his action ; how 
continual, and how manifold. 

When he came into power the Nation was as a 
conrpany lost in the woods ; with sudden gulfs sink- 
ing before it; with stealthy robbers lurking near; 
with utter darkness overhead; the sun gone down, the 
light of all the constellations quenched. No man knew 
certainly what to do, which way to turn, on whom to 
rely. There was danger in advancing, perhaps greater 



4^ 



in delay ; danger that everything precious might be 
lost; danger, even, that the travelers themselves, in their 

dark fear and furious haste, might turn on each other 
with deadly blows. You remember what an infinite 
jargon of counsels, from all presses, forums, individual 
speakers, rent and vexed the gloomy air ; with what 
passionate eagerness the public sought on every side for 
some avenue of escape — urging the adoption of one 
course to day, and of another, its opposite, to-morrow. 
All voices sounded strange in the darkness; all paths 
were obliterated; all bearings lost. There was a pro- 
digious power in the Nation; but it was feverish, .head- 
strong, chaotic. There was a terrific onset to be met. 
The Past showed no instances by which to instruct ; 
the Future no outlet, toward which to invite. It 
seemed impossible that any one man should be aide to 
hold and lead the Country ; especially that one with- 
out wide fame, without large experience, without the 
prestige of previous leadership, should be able to guide 
it into safety. 

Measure then the results to which we have come, 
against the conditions in which we stood, and say if any- 
thing short of a Sagacity that seems providential could 
have brought us out of darkness into day ; along 
precipice and pitfall, and through the valleys of strife 
and woe, to the sunlighted summits on which we rest. 
There is nothing accidental in this result. No happy 
chances secured it for us. The unusual wisdom of him 



4ft 

who led us is demonstrated by it ; — a wisdom move re- 
markable, because more rare, tliau any specific mental 
faculty ; more lofty than eloquence, more illustrious 
than song. 

And when we examine the path which he trod, how- 
ever at the. time we criticized his steps, our impression 
of this great property in him becomes more vivid. 
You can hardly touch a point in his policy where it 
does not appear. 

The tentative nature of his early administration, — his 
delays to act, by which men were irritated, and at 
which they sneered, as showing his want of a positive 
purpose, — yet proved in the end to have been indispen- 
sable to make the action, when it was taken, univer- 
sally acceptable. In the particular form of his measures, 
as much as in the measures themselves, in the very 
times at which they were initiated, this Sagacity is dis- 
covered. His radicalism showed it; for it was always 
conservative and rational, not startling the timid. His 
conservatism showed it; for it was always intelligent, 
not Mind, liberal and persuasive, and never imperious. 

Reviewing at a glance the whole series of his policy 
in these swiffc-whiiiing and perilous years, we may say 
that in these five points especially, his Sagacity wav 
revealed. First : in his early perception of the fact that 
compromise was impossible, and that, with the existing 
views and temper <>f the rebel leaders and the disloyal 
people, the issues .-it stake between them and the Gov- 



19 

eminent had got to be settled by the stem and fearful 
arbitrament of Battle. Second: in his immediate deter- 
mination that the war should commence through some 
unjustified act of aggression on the part of the Revolt, 
and not through any offensive display of purpose and 
power on the part of the Government. Third: in his 
tenacious adherence, from first to last, to the one great 
end to he secured by the war, — the maintenance of the 
Government in all its prerogatives, the maintenance of 
the Republic in its territorial and legal integrity; and 
in his strict subordination to this of all that he did, of 
all Iris refusals to take any action. Fourth: in the 
constant flexibility of his methods, his readiness to u\ 
one thing or another, to see which instrument would be 
most effective for accomplishing the work in which 
there was neither rule to guide nor example to instruct 
him; and in his constant recognition of the tact that the 
march of events was governing him, while he in turn 
was influencing it, and that his highest wisdom was to 
discern what Providence meant to accomplish, and to 
move in the line of its battalions. Ami, Finally: in the 
absolute fixedness of purpose with which he avoided 
foreign complications, and, postponing everything else, 
held the Nation to its one work of subduing rebellion, 
and making the Government everywhere supreme. 

Take all these related facts into view, -observe li>>\\ 
early they began t<> appear, and how consistent, stead- 
fast, deliberate, was that administration of public at- 



50 

fairs which they represent ; how largely this was origi- 
nal with himself, how freely at any rate he accepted it, 
and how persistently he carried it out, — and surely his 
immense Sagacity can need no other demonstration. It 
was his policy. The symmetry of it shows the single- 
ness of the brain by which it was moulded. He sur- 
rounded himself with eminent counsellors. It was one 
fruit of his wisdom that he did so. And they no doubt 
often influenced him, while in turn instructed or cor- 
rected by him. But he was always the head of the 
Cabinet ; so that it sometimes was matter of complaint 
that he did not yield, as others would have done, to the 
different preferences or the adverse decisions of those 
combined in it. The truth is, his policy had to be his 
own. He took light gladly, but he could not take law, 
from other minds. And while his counsellors must al- 
ways have a share, and that a large one, in the credit and 
renown which belong to his policy, his name must 
be always first and supremely identified with it. He 
adopted it because he saw it the best; and whatever 
opposition or whatever applause it afterward encounter- 
ed, when his mind was made up it never seems to have 
subsequently wavered. He knew his plan, what the 
issue proved it, the wisest thing. 

His Sagacity was shown, almost as much as in his 
policy itself, in the modes and means, in the very forms 
of statement and illustration, by which he presented 
it to the public. lie could be eloquent, if he would. 



5 J 

Remember the close of his Ohio Letter: " Peace does 
not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will conic 
soon, and come to stay; and so conic as to be worth 
the keeping. It will then have been proved, that 
among freemen there can be no successful appeal from 
the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such ap- 
peal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost. And then 
there will be some black men who can remember that 
with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, 
and well-poised bayonet, they have helped Mankind on 
to this great consummation; while I fear that there 
will be some white men unable to forget that with 
malignant heart, and deceitful speech, they have striven 
to hinder it." 

But generally the most marked feature of his style 
was its utter simplicity. 

The usual plethoric platitudes of State-papers were 
curiously contrasted by his simple and sinewy sentences. 
If an editor wrote to him, he wrote back to the editor, 
and published his answer. And when the people 
had got over their astonishment at his audacity, they 
believed all the more in his utter sincerity. No man 
ever lived who spoke more directly to the heart of the 
people. Critics might quarrel with his rhetoric some- 
times; but critics themselves could not gainsay the 
fact that his homely and pithy words had ;i power be- 
yond all ornate paragraphs. With what absolute com- 
pleteness and precision was the origin of the war ex- 



52 

plained by him, and the course of the People concerning 
it justified, in this one sentence: " Both parties depre- 
cated war. But one of them would make war, rather 
than let the Nation survive ; and the other would accept 
war, rather than let it perish ; — and the war came !" 

His very colloquialisms were mighty for his service. 
' We must keep still pegging away,' he said, in the 
gloomiest period of the war ; and every plain man saw 
his duty, and was nerved to perform it. ' One war at a 
time :' — all the orators could not answer it ; a unanimous 
press could not have overborne the impression it made. 
' The United States Government must not undertake 
to run the churches :' — the dictum is worth a half-dozen 
duodecimos on the complex relations of Church and 
State. 'You needn't cross a bridge until you have got 
to it :' — if men's minds were not relieved of their fears 
concerning the effect of a general Emancipation, they 
were at least widely persuaded to postpone these, by 
the pithy advice. 'The central idea of Secession, 1 he 
said in one of his Messages, 'is the essence of Anarchy :' 
and elaborate pages could not have said more than that 
one apothegm. It is a head-line for copy-books, for all 
time to come. 

Always, the Sagacity which had selected his policy, 
and which usually chose with great final correctness 
the men and the times for putting it in practice, was 
shown as well in the homely phrase, or proverb, or 
anecdote, which made it familiar throughout the land. 



53 

More than his opponents knew at the time, more than 
the people themselves were aware, he argued the 
questions of his administration, he carried the public 
judgment to his conclusions, by those quaint words 
which all remembered, and which were repeated with 
laughing satisfaction at thousands of firesides. His 
maxims were more effective than his messages ; and a 
score of presses could not have rivaled the service of 
some of his stories. 

With intuitive skill he selected his policy. With a 
skill almost equal he made the people aware what it 
was. And when it had been adopted by him he car- 
ried it out, as I said before, with a power of Will per 
haps as remarkable as was the Sagacity which had 
planned it. 

He had not certainly what is called ' an iron will.' 
Well for him that he had not ! It might have involved 
the destruction of his influence, and the sacrifice of the 
interests he was set to conserve. For iron breaks when 
it is bent; and no man lives, or ever lived, who could 
have kept his will unbent, amid such times as we have 
passed. Accumulated defeats, disheartening oj ►posi- 
tions, complaints without reason, intolerable delays, — 
the resolution that boasts itself inflexible might have 
been fractured beneath the burden, and the very pil- 
lars of the Government have been unsettled. But 
President Lincoln had what was better ; a will like 
strands of tempered steel ; flexible in small things, das- 



54 

tic, pliant, and always sheathed in a playful gentleness, 
but not liable to be snapped, however it was bent, and 
springing back from every pressure in its primitive 
toughness. Men called him undecided, vacillating, 
uncertain; and so he was in minor matters, — in great 
things, even, till the argument was closed and his mind 
was made up. But when it was, the same men called 
him obstinate, headstrong; for nothing could change 
him. He dismissed more than once his most promi- 
nent generals; and all the pressure of persons or par-, 
ties could no more change his purpose afterward than 
it could shake the base of the Alleghanies. He re- 
tained his Cabinet, against the threat of serious divis- 
ions in the party which had chosen him. He would 
not go to war with England, in the case of the Trent, 
he would not get involved in a controversy with 
France, on the question of the French occupation of 
Mexico, though friends insisted on his taking high 
ground, and enemies sneered without stay or stint 
because he did not. He launched the bolt of his 
Proclamation, against the Slaver)' which had nourished 
Rebellion, though a thousand voices prophesied dis- 
aster. 

Deliberate, till at times he almost seemed dilatory, — 
unwilling to commit himself till all sides of a question 
had been thoroughly canvassed, and ready, to the very 
verge of a fault, to hear to the last the humblest repre- 
sentative of any interest or any opinion, — he was yet 



55 

as staunch as the ribs of the Ironsides when his course 
was decided; and it was like pulling against gravita- 
tion, to try thenceforth to detain or deflect him. The 
tenacity of his will was like that of his muscle, which 
could hold out an axe at arm's length without a quiver 
when others drooped. Its influence reminded one of the 
suck of the under-drift on a sea beach: which does not 
appear upon the surface, and makes no visible wrestle 
with the waves, but which carries everything into its 
current, and compels the strongest and skillfulest 
swimmer to yield himself vanquished. 

Let one other fact, then, be brought to view, and the 
secret of his Power is perhaps all before us. It is 
that his powers were so simple, native, and unostenta- 
tious, that they hardly impressed men while he was 
living as so great as they were; they excited no jeal- 
ousies; they startled no fears; and the popular trust 
in them was unapprehensive. At the same time they 
were so original, constitutional, so independent even 
of training, much more of adventitious aids, that they 
always were ready for instant use, and only grew 
more adequate to their work, as its pressure upon fchem 
became more tremendous. So, again, he had a power 
which more brilliant men, or more literary men, would 
certainly have wanted; and all his force became most 
effective. 

If genius had taken the place of his sagacity, men 
might have been afraid of him, as they are of the Light- 
LOFC 



56 

ning. It is splendid, hut fitful ; and its bolts may drop 
where tliey were not expected. But his force was so 
quiet, patient, pervasive, that it wrought like the vital 
force in nature, which is not exhibited in any flash, but 
which streams unheard through the breasts of the 
earth, and comes to its expression with certainty though 
with silence, in bud and fruit, and an infinite verdure. 
If it had been the result of education, and political prac- 
tice, or of special accomplishments, there would have 
been something precarious in it. It would have de- 
pended somewhat on circumstances. It would have 
been liable to be shaken, if not shattered, when new 
and great emergencies were met. But being so native 
and intrinsic as it was, so wholly the result of his 
special constitution, it not only gave no sign of yielding, 
it became ever more thorough and masterly, as it was 
summoned by grander cares to new exhibition. His 
nature grew only larger, and more capable, as time went 
on. His faculties were not wearied by the work they 
were put to, and remained to the end unworn and fresh. 
This essential naturalness, this silentness and con- 
stancy, marking his powers, were not favorable perhaps 
to his instant hold on the public admiration. .Men 
were not surprised by him into bursts of applause. 
They nowhere saw one mighty figure, cloud-enveloped, 
iris-crow ncd, riding with splendid supremacy on the 
storm, or heard a voice as of Jove himself commanding 
Peace; andfor the time they felt disappointed. Hut his 



57 

power was more universal in its reach because it was 
quiet ; and now that it is gone we honor it the more, be- 
cause it was essential, not artificial, serene and patient, 
not impulsive and scenic. 

As the sunshine draws less admiration than the pic- 
ture, but is recognized still as a far grander good ; as 
the river is not so much praised as the fountain, but 
with its inexhaustible current is a million-fold more 
mighty and precious ; as the stars do not interest our 
fancy so much as the glittering fire-works which cor- 
ruscate beneath, while yet they hold the earth itself on 
its calm poise, — so other statesmen have won more ap- 
plause than was given to him. In times of paroxysmal 
excitement they have seemed to show a more supreme 
and sudden power. But now that he is gone, we miss 
the Sagacity which lighted up intricate paths like the 
sunshine. We miss the deep and constant currents of 
Thought and Will which bore great burdens without a 
ripple. We feel how grandly secure we were while 
the star, now hidden in higher splendors, held up with 
its unfailing influence the very structure and frame of 
the Government. 

Ladies and Gentlemen: — Such was the Man for 
whom we mourn ; and such the Position in which 
Providence had placed him. Think then a moment of 
the Work which he wrought in it, and all our reasons 
for gladness and for grief, on this day set ap.-ut t<» com- 
memorate him, will be before us. 



58 

With the character I have sketched, to give him at 
once impulse and law, with such effective powers for 
its instruments, with so many trained and skillful minds 
eager to help him, and amid the unparalleled opportu- 
nities which by his times were opened to him, it might 
have been expected that his Work should be a great 
one. It could not even be matter of surprise that it 
should have a colossal character ; — like the reach of 
the river, along^ which he had <mided his flat-boat in 
his youth ; like the stretch of the prairies, on which 
he had builded his home as a man. And yet how far, 
in its actual development, it transcended even such 
expectations ! How singular it is among the recorded 
achievements of Man ! How plainly is revealed in it a 
higher than any human Will, laying out and ar- 
ranging the mighty scheme ! 

When he took in hand the reins of the Government, 
the finances of the country seemed hopelessly deranged ; 
and after many years of peace it was difficult to raise 
money, at unprecedented interest, for its daily use. 
And when he died — after such expenditures as no man 
had dreamed of, through four long years of devastating 
war — the credit of the Republic was so firmly estab- 
lished that foreign markets were clamorous for its bonds, 
and the very worst thing which could have happened, 
his own destruction, did not depress by one hair's 
breadth the absolute confidence of our own people in 
them. When lie came to Washington, the navy at tin' 



59 



command of the Government was scattered, almost be- 
yond recall, to the ends of the earth, and was even 
ludicrously insufficient for instant needs. He left it 
framed of iron instead of oak, with wholly new princi- 
ples expressed in its structure, and large enough to 
bind the continent in blockade, while it made the Na- 
tional nag familiar on every sea which commerce crosses. 
He found an army remotely dispersed, almost hopelessly 
disorganized, by the treachery of its officers ; with hardly 
enough of it left at hand to furnish a body-guard for 
his march to the Capital. He left a half-million of 
men in arms, after the losses of fifty campaigns, — with 
valor, discipline, arms, and generalship, unsurpassed in 
the world, and admonitory to it. He found our diplo- 
macy a by-word and a hissing in most of the principal 
foreign courts. He made it intelligent, influential, 
respected, wherever a civilized language is spoken. 

In his moral and political achievements at home, he 
was still more successful. He found the arts of indus- 
try prostrated, almost paralyzed indeed, by the arresi 
of commerce, the repudiation of debts, the universal 
distrust. He left them so trained, quickened, and de- 
veloped, that henceforth they are secure amid the 
world's competition. He came to Washington, through 
a people morally rent and disorganized ; — of whom it 
was known that a part at least were- in full accord with 
the disloyal plans; and concerning whom it was pre- 
dicted by some, and feared by many, thai the slightest 



60 

pressure from the Government upon them would re- 
solve them at once into "fighting factions. He laid heavy 
taxes, he drafted them into armies, he made no effort 
to excite their admiration, he seemed to throw down 
even the ancient muniments of their personal liberty ; 
and he went back to his grave through the very same 
people so knit into one, by their love for each other 
and their reverence for him, that the cracking of the 
continent hardly could part them. 

At his entrance on his office he found the leaders 
of the largest, fiercest, and most confident rebellion 
known to history, apparently in all things superior to 
himself: — in capacity, in culture, in political experi- 
ence, in control over men, in general weight with the 
country itself. And when he was assassinated, he left 
them so utterly overthrown and discomfited that they 
fled over sea, or hid themselves in women's clothes. A 
power it had taken thirty years to mature, a power 
that put every thing into the contest — money, men, 
harbors, homes, churches, cities, states themselves — and 
that fought with a fury never surpassed, he not only 
crushed but extinguished in four years. A court that 
had been the chief bulwark of Slavery, he so re-organ- 
ized as to make it a citadel of liberty and light for all 
time to come. He found a race immeshed in a bondage 
which had lasted already two hundred years, and had 
been only compacted ami confirmed by invention and 
commerce, by arts, legislations, by social usage, by 



01 

ethnic theories, and even by what was called religion; 
he pretended to no special fondness for the race; be 
refused to make war on its behalf; but he took it up 
cheerfully in the sweep of his plans, and left it a race 
of free workers and soldiers. 

He came to the Capital of an empire severed, by 
what seemed to the world eternal lines; with sec- 
tional interests, with antithetic ideas, with irremovable 
hatreds, forbidding reconstruction. He left it the Capi- 
tal of an empire so restored, that the thought of its 
division is henceforth an absurdity; witli its unity 
more complete than that of Great Britain; with its 
ancient flag, and its unchallenged rule, supreme again 
from the Lakes to the Gulf. Nay : he found a Nation 
that had lost in a measure its primitive faith in the 
grand ideas of its own Constitution ; and he left that 
Nation so instructed and renewed, so aware of the 
supremacy of principles over forces, so committed to the 
Justice and the Liberty which its founders had valued, 
that the era of his power has been the era of its new 
birth; that its history will be nobler and more lumin- 
ous forever for his inspirations. 

Not public achievements are his only memorial. His 
influence has come, like the 'clear shining after rain,' 
on the lesser interests, on the private career, on the per- 
sonal character of the people whom lie ruled. He 

educated a Nation, with the Berserkers 1 M 1 in it, into 

a gentleness more strange than its skill, and more glori- 



62 

ous tlian its valor ; a gentleness which even the sight of 
starved men could not sting into ferocity. Through 
his personal spirit he restrained and exalted the temper 
of a continent ; and our letters are to be nobler, our art 
more spiritual, our philanthropy more generous, our very 
churches more earnest and free, because of what we 
have learned from him. The public estimation of 
Honesty is brighter. The sense of the power and 
grandeur of Character is more intimate in men's minds. 
We know henceforth what style of manhood America 
needs, and in her progress tends to produce. We have 
a new courage concerning: the Future. We have a fresh 
and deeper sense of that eternal Providence which he 
recognized. 

Not to our country has his work been confined. 
Across the sea extends his influence. It vibrates this 
hour around the world; and despotic institutions are 
less secure, the progress of liberty throughout Europe, 
throughout Christendom, is more rapid and sure, by 
reason of that which he has wrought. The peoples are 
more hopeful, and the bayonets are more thoughtful. The 
millennium of Nations is nearer than it was. The 
Race itself is lifted forward, toward the gates of mingled 
gold and pearl that wait to swing, on silent hinges, into 
the age of Freedom and of Peace. 

All this is his Work. Of course he lias had immense 
forces to work with; great counsellors to suggest, great 
captains and admirals to accomplish ; a million brains 



63 

to be Lis helpers ; a people full of thought and zeal to 
inspire his plans, and push them on. Of course God's 
power, in which he trusted, has gone before and wrought 
beside him; and he himself, aided by it, lias 'builded 
better than he knew.' But still the Work continues 
his: since he has accomplished it, while another man, 
with different powers and a different temper, in the 
same position, could not have performed it. Without 
signal genius, or learning, or accomplishments, but with 
patience, kindness, a faithful will, a masterly sagacity, — - 
planted in times tilled full of peril, yet opulent also 
in immense opportunities, working with instruments 
so manifold and mighty as have been hardly before 
entrusted to man, and never before so nobly used, — it 
has been his to do this Work : to make his Country 
one and grand; to make the Principles, in which it lias 
its highest glory, supreme forever; to make the World 
more hopeful, and more free ! 

In this, then, is the final vindication of his fame ; the 
grandest memorial of his Character and Power which it 
has yet been given to any man to build on earth. He 
did it so naturally, that hardly at any point does it 
give us the impression of extraordinary exertion. He 
did it so silently, that the world was startled with ex- 
tremist surprise when it found it accomplished. He 
did it so thoroughly, that even his death could not in- 
terrupt it, could only complete and crown the whole 
He might well leave a work so grand when the cap- 



64 

stone had been placed upon it. The flag just lifted 
anew on Fort Sumter, — symbolic as it was of the War 
concluded, of the Nation restored, — might well be the 
signal for his departure. More than almost any other 
man, he could say with the Lord, looking back on his 
ministry, " It is finished !" 

Reviewing this Work, so vast, so enduring, and so 
sublime, and looking up unto that which is now for 
him its consummation, all eulogy is inadequate, if it 
be not in vain. The monuments we may build — and 
which it is our instinct and our privilege to build, in all 
our cities as well as at the Capital, in this city by the 
sea, as well as in that where his dust sleeps — are not 
needful to him, but only to the hearts from which they 
arise, and the future generations which the}' shall in- 
struct. From the topmost achievement yet realized by 
man, he has stepped to the skies. He leads heneefoii h, 
the hosts whom he marshalled, and who at his word 
went forth to battle, on plains invisible to our short 
sight. He stands side by side once more with the 
orator, so cultured and renowned, with whom he stood 
on the heights of Gettysburgh ; but now on hills where 
rise no graves, and over which march, in shining ranks, 
with trumpet-swells and palms of triumph, immortal 
hosts. lie is with the fathers and founders of the 
Republic; whose cherished plans he carried out, whose 
faith and hope had in his work their great fruition. 
He is with all builders of Christian States, who, work- 



65 



ing with prescient skill and will, and with true conse- 
cration, have laid the foundations of human progress, 
and made Mankind their constant debtor. 

The Heavens are bis home. But the Earth and its 
records will take care of his fame. For « »f all wh< >m he 
meets and dwells with there, no one has held a higher 
trust ; no one has been more loyal to it ; no one has 
left a work behind more grand and vast. And so 1< >ng as 
the Government which he re-established shall continue 
to endure; so long as the Country which he made again 
the home of one Nation shall hold that Nation within 
its compass, and shall continue to attract to its bosom 
the liberty-loving from every land ; so long as the People 
which he emancipated shall make the palmetto and the 
orange-tree quiver with the hymns of its jubilee; so 
long as the Kace which he has set forward shall con- 
tinue to advance, through brightening paths, to the 
Future that waits for its swift steps,— a fame as familiar 
as any among men, a character as distinguished, ami an 
influence as wide, will be the fame, the character, and 
the influence, of him who came four years ago an un- 
known man from his home in the West, but who has 
now written in letters of light, on pages as grand and 
as splendid as any in the history of the World, the 
illustrious name of 



OEATION 



sitUnt Jtbtnbam Lincoln, 



E. S. STOERS. Jr.. D. D 



'.- '09 



